Photo by: Michael Furman
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper congratulated DU for its new bike-sharing program in a speech on Driscoll Green on yesterday.
The bike library program will allow students, faculty and staff to rent one of 20 bikes at two kiosks at residence halls on campus and use it for free daily beginning next fall.
“With bike sharing you not only save money, not only get healthier, but you are also reducing carbon emissions and moving us closer to a clean air and healthier community,” he said.
Students and campus departments have contributed $50,000 to Denver Bike Sharing to assist with the costs of the DU program.
The nonprofit corporation Denver Bike Sharing will manage the campus-wide program. The corporation will make 600 bikes available for public use at kiosks across Denver in 2010.
Hickenlooper said that a national household travel surveys shows a quarter of all trips taken are less than a mile long. On average, people would save $440 a year by biking to work one day a week, he said.
“Our grand plan is to get overall bike commuting to be 10 percent within the next 10 years,” Hickenlooper said. “None of this happens without real leadership. It’s the people like yourselves who step up on your busy days with all your competing demands for your time and step forward and say, ‘I’m going to make something real happen.'”
Hickenlooper also congratulated DU on an award that was recently given by the Environmental Protection Agency for purchasing the most wind energy in the Sun Belt Conference.
“That [award] is such a great example of why this university is such a great partner to the city,” Hickenlooper said.
Chancellor Coombe, who introduced the mayor, said that the sustainability effort is one of importance for students at DU.
“The greatest thing we can do is to offer all of our students an experience that [will teach them] good stewardship of the earth, which will lead to solutions to all of the grave environmental problems that face us today,” he said. “We have an obligation as an institution to act in a responsible way with regard to the land and air and with programs like this we intend to keep up our part of the bargain.”
Seniors Zoee Turrill and Mary Jean O’Malley, both outgoing vice chairs of the sustainability council committee, spearheaded DU’s bike-sharing program.
“The sustainability movement began two years ago. Since chancellor Coombe signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, students have been at the forefront of green initiatives on campus from recycling to composting, the community garden and bike sharing,” O’Malley said. “None of these great university projects would have been possible without students and with amazing student activism.”
In his last remarks, Hickenlooper declared May 18, 2009 as “Zoee Turrill and Mary Jean O’Malley day.”
